Civil Service Reform 
and Popular Government 


Address by 

President Charles W* Eliot 

President of the National Civil Service 
Reform League 

Delivered at the Thirty-first Annual Meeting 

of the 

NATIONAL CIVIL SERVICE REFORM LEAGUE 

At PHILADELPHIA, PA. 

December 14, i9\\ 

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PUBLISHED FOR THE 

NATIONAL CIVIL SERVICE REFORM LEAGUE, 
79 Wall Street, New York. 

1912. 






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Civil Service Reform and Popular Government 

CHARLES W. ELIOT, PRESIDENT OF THE LEAGUE. 

Tor ten years past the American people has been 
manifesting in many ways a determination to win back 
for the voters that direct control over public action of 
which representative government as administered by 
political bosses and machines controlling party organiza¬ 
tions had robbed it. This determination of the people has 
found expression in much new legislation. It seized on 
the referendum as a means of preventing the frauds and 
robberies perpetrated by elected officials in the gift, sale, 
or lease, of valuable franchises to public utility corpora¬ 
tions. It utilized the initiative as a means of supplement¬ 
ing the slow, ineffective action of state legislatures and 
municipal councils. It proposed the recall as a means of 
getting rid of dishonest or inefficient public officers who 
had been imposed on the people by powerful bosses and 
rings. The rapid spread of the commission form of gov¬ 
ernment, invented at Galveston, has been due to the con¬ 
viction on the part of the people of more than one hun¬ 
dred and fifty cities that under that form they could rid 
themselves of the corrupt bands of professional poli¬ 
ticians, which had made municipal government in the 
United States a by-word for inefficiency and dishonesty. 
Again, the people seeking for deliverance from the rule 
of nominating conventions managed by party bosses and 
their henchmen, set up party primaries as a hopeful sub¬ 
stitute for conventions; and as fast as they learn by trial 
that party primaries can be managed by the bosses and 
machines almost as easily as conventions and caucuses 
were, they prepare to face the adoption of other means 
of defense, such as open nominations, the preliminary 
election, and the short ballot. 

Still another manifestation of the people’s determina¬ 
tion to resume the power they have lost through the per¬ 
version of their representative institutions is their insist¬ 
ence on the direct election of United States senators. 


The strength, large scope, and firm persistence of this 
popular determination cannot be doubted; and yet it has 
never struck at the root of the complete evil it is trying 
to remedy. That root is the money which the political 
machines control through the spoils method of appoint¬ 
ment to salaried places in the civil service of the United 
States, the states and the cities. 

The civil service reform to which this League has been 
devoted for thirty years is important as a means of in¬ 
creasing the efficiency of the public service, through the 
methods of inquiry and testing which secure appointments 
for good capacity and character; but it is vastly more im¬ 
portant as the essential means of wresting from the bosses 
and machines the power to nominate and elect public offi¬ 
cers, of restoring this power to the people, and so of im¬ 
proving throughout the country the conditions of political 
activity and public life. Civil service reform strikes at 
the root of the evil against which the American people has 
been struggling somewhat blindly—its loss of control over 
public affairs—by taking away the machines’ means of 
subsistence. It is their grip on the vast total of the sal¬ 
aries paid to public officers appointed by the patronage 
method and on the personal services of such officers, which 
maintains the bosses, rings and machines. The patron ex¬ 
pects the personal service and support of his appointees, 
and in the common estimation has a good claim on their 
time, and for party uses on the salaries he has pro¬ 
cured for them. Officials who owe their places to a boss 
or a ring will always pay their debts in work for the 
party of the patron and for the patron himself and in 
contributions for campaign expenses. To do so is their 
personal interest. 

Here is an immense fund of labor and money, much 
of which can be concealed, to be spent on accomplishing 
the purposes and prolonging the power of the senators, 
congressmen, governors,, mayors and state, county, or city 
elected representatives and officials who control all the 
appointments not made on the merit system. Every po¬ 
litical machine subsists on its patronage, and every boss 
maintains his bossdom at the public expense by appro¬ 
priating the time of public servants which the public is 



3 

paying for, and parts of numerous salaries paid from the 
public treasury. 

A patron is valuable in proportion to the length of his 
term of office, to his political prestige, and to his effective¬ 
ness in procuring and shrewdness in using opportunities 
to make appointments. A United States senator is a 
more desirable patron than a member of the House of 
Representatives; a four-year governor or mayor than a 
two-year; a permanent county official than one elected for 
a year or two. The most effective bosses have been men 
who held no office, but built up a durable power by skill¬ 
ful use, year after year, of the great patronage fund of 
services and money, reinforced by the contributions of 
persons and corporations who wished to buy or buy off. 
legislation, and found it better to deal with one efficient 
boss than with numerous corruptible individuals. 

The way to destroy root and branch this abominable 
product of the Jacksonian spoils doctrine is to extend 
the merit system of appointment to all national, state, and 
city offices. By so doing, the whole country would not 
only obtain much better service in all public offices, but 
also purify all its political life, and restore to the people 
the control of the public business. 

How much progress towards this consummation has 
been made during the thirty years life of this League? 
Encouraging progress in regard to the subordinate places 
with low salaries, very little in regard to the higher grades 
with salaries worth assessing for political purposes. In 
the national civil service about 230,000* places are in the 
competitive classified service, and the holders of these 
places are under no obligations to any patron and are 
prohibited from taking active part “in political manage¬ 
ment or political campaigns.” On the other hand, nearly 
all the superior offices, having good or high salaries, are 
still filled by the patronage method. With few excep¬ 
tions, the incumbents are indebted for their places to 


^According to the last report of the United States Commis¬ 
sion 227,657. This is exclusive, however, of about 25,000 navy 
yard mechanics and 6,500 laborers subject to competitive regu¬ 
lations but not strictly speaking in the competitive classified 
service. 



4 


some senator, congressman, party committee, or private 
referee, and feel it a duty to work for their patron on 
demand. 

Over appointments to the higher salaried offices, which 
can only be filled “by and with the advice and consent of 
the Senate,” that body has control; but under the prac¬ 
tice called “the courtesy of the Senate” that control has 
passed to the individual senators of the dominant party. 
These higher offices cannot be classified under the civil 
service act of 1883 “unless by direction of the Senate.” 

The patronage power of senators and representatives 
is fully recognized by each successive administration— 
never more frankly than by the present—and accordingly 
postmasters of every grade (except fourth-class post¬ 
masters north of the Ohio and Potomac and east of the 
Mississippi), collectors of customs or internal revenue, 
United States district-attorneys, and marshals are all 
patronage appointees, owing and paying allegiance and 
service to the person or persons who procured their ap¬ 
pointment. Many of these office-holders are able men 
skilled in political management and more industrious in 
such work than in their proper functions. 

The average political appointee performs comparative¬ 
ly little service for the government. He was not ap¬ 
pointed because of fitness and he rarely makes himself fit. 
The work of his office is done by his subordinates, most 
of whom to-day belong to the competitive classified 
service. Except at Washington and a few other cities the 
spoils offices could be left vacant without any serious im¬ 
pairment of the service. Nothing could be more unbusi¬ 
nesslike and wasteful than the present mode of filling 
the higher places in the civil service; but the wastefulness 
of the spoils method is of little moment compared with its 
corrupting effect on the political life of the people. 

The civil service of the states and cities is on the whole 
not so far advanced towards a sound merit system of 
appointment as that of the nation, although a few states 
have passed respectable laws, and a few cities have made 
strong efforts to secure a service free from political in¬ 
fluences and selected for fitness only. The numerous 


5 

cities which have adopted the commission form of govern¬ 
ment have frequently procured the insertion in the new 
charter of an article providing a merit system for the 
selection of the city’s servants; but these provisions have 
not all been well designed to secure the end in view. 
Some of the civil service commissions established have 
not been independent themselves, others have been im¬ 
properly constituted, and others still have been denied ade¬ 
quate appropriations. On the other hand, the State of 
New York and the city of Chicago have used the merit 
method of thorough inquiry and competitive examination 
with perfect success on candidates for well-paid positions 
as experts. 

Under existing conditions office holders, national, 
state, or municipal, control party organizations and com¬ 
mittees on credentials and resolutions dominate conven¬ 
tions, cut and dry primary elections and take care in good 
season of the membership of legislatures. The federal 
office-holder’s machine, particularly active in the Southern 
States, is organized in Washington, and more than once 
a Cabinet officer has been the real head of it. It may 
easily hold the balance of power in the National Conven¬ 
tion of the party in office, and so control both the nomina¬ 
tions a*hd the declarations of policy. State and city con¬ 
ventions often exhibit like phenomena. 

How can the people rid themselves of this intolerable 
obstruction to the free exercise of their honest will ? Only 
by extending the merit system of appointment to the en¬ 
tire civil services of the country, and establishing the 
general rule that civil servants are not to take active part 
in party management or political campaigns. Presidents 
Hayes, Cleveland and Roosevelt all protested against the 
political activity of civil servants; but their declarations 
produced little effect, until in 1907 President Roosevelt 
issued an effective order prohibiting persons in the com¬ 
petitive classified service from taking part in political 
management or in political campaigns. The enforcement 
of this order was entrusted to the National Civil Service 
Commission, which had no difficulty in enforcing it. In¬ 
deed the order was welcome to the subordinate employees 


6 


to whom it applied. The remedy for the great evil of 
boss, ring and machine management of politics is plainly 
indicated in the effect of President Roosevelt’s order to 
the competitive classified service, namely, make the whole 
civil service of the country, national, state, and municipal, 
a competitive classified service, and prohibit political 
activity to civil servants. When all the superior offices 
as well as the subordinate are filled with men appointed or 
promoted for merit, the country will get from its servants 
the whole time it pays for, the mind of each servant will 
be in his work, and not in party politics, the service of a 
patron, and the preservation of his own place, and then 
the greatest hindrance to good government in the United 
States will have been done away with. 

This is the goal of the National Civil Service Reform 
League. The League has every reason to be of good 
courage in the prosecution of its patriotic labors. The 
merit system, incomplete as it is, has proved its value 
wherever it has been applied. The effective order against 
political activity has proved to be welcome to 230,000 
persons in the classified service of the United States. The 
President of the United States in his message to Con¬ 
gress last year practically recommended that th^ entire 
civil service of the national government, including the 
offices now filled with the advice and consent of the Senate, 
be placed on the merit system of appointment, with the 
exception only of “officers responsible for the policy of 
administration and their immediate personal assistants or 
deputies.” 

Until these recommendations are adopted civil service 
reform cannot demonstrate its full advantages. The best 
kind of young men will not enter a service, except for 
some temporary object, or will not remain in it, if they 
can have no access to its higher places. The civil service, 
national, state, and municipal, ought to offer a highly satis¬ 
factory career to energetic, ambitious, and patriotic young 
men. It has not for two generations. 

The work which lies before the League will be even 
more beneficent than that it has already done, for it will 


7 


be concerned with the higher branches of the service. 
From the beginning it has been a work of public instruc¬ 
tion in political morality and in the business-like conduct 
of public administration. It is that to-day; but it also 
teaches with new urgency that the moral success of re¬ 
publican institutions requires the complete eradication 
from all the public services of the spoils or patronage 
system of appointment and promotion. 














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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


OFFICERS, 1911-1912 

PRESIDENT: 

CHARLES W. ELIOT. 

VICE-PRESIDENTS: 

EDWIN A. ALDERMAN, FRANKLIN MACVEAGH, 

CHARLES J. BONAPARTE, GEORGE A. POPE, 

JOSEPH H. CHOATE, HENRY A. RICHMOND, 

HARRY A. GARFIELD, MOORFIELD STOREY, 

GEORGE GRAY, THOMAS N. STRONG, 

ARTHUR T. HADLEY, HERBERT WELSH, 

SETH LOW, WOODROW WILSON. 

SECRETARY: TREASURER: 

ELLIOT H. GOODWIN. A. S. FRISSELL. 

ASS’T. SECRETARIES : 

ROBT. W. BELCHER. 

GEORGE T. KEYES. 

COUNCIL: 

CHARLES J. BONAPARTE, Chairman 

WILLIAM V. KELLEN, 
FRANCIS B. KELLOGG, 
JOHN F. LEE, 



0 028 070 948 


WILLIAM A. AIKEN, 
FREDERIC ALMY, 

ARTHUR H. BROOKS, 
CHARLES C. BURLINGHAM, 
GEORGE BURNHAM, JR., 
SILAS W. BURT, 

JOHN A. BUTLER, 

EDWARD CARY, 

ROBERT CATHERWOOD, 
LEANDER T. CHAMBERLAIN, 
WILLIAM C. COFFIN, 
EVERETT COLBY, 

CHARLES COLLINS, 

JOSEPH P. COTTON, JR., 
WILLIAM E. CUSHING, 
RICHARD HENRY DANA, 
HORACE E. DEMING, 

ALBERT DE ROODE, 

JOHN JOY EDSON, 

JOHN A. FAIRLIE, 

HENRY W. FARNAM, 

CYRUS D. FOSS, JR., 
WILLIAM DUDLEY FOULKE, 
CHARLES NOBLE GREGORY, 
H. R. GUILD, 

HENRY W. HARDON, 

ROBERT D. JENKS, 

STILES P. JONES, 


WILLIAM G. LOW, 

GEORGE McANENY, 

HENRY L. MCCUNE, 
HARRY J. MILLIGAN, 
WILLIAM B. MOULTON, 
SAMUEL Y. NASH, 
SAMUEL H. ORDWAY, 
ELLIOTT H. PENDLETON, 
JOHN READ, 

H. O. REIK, 

CHARLES RICHARDSON, 
NELSON S. SPENCER, 
HENRY W. SPRAGUE, 
LUCIUS B. SWIFT, 

FRANK J. SYMMES, 

W. J. TREMBATH, 

HENRY VAN KLEECK, 

W. W. VAUGHAN, 
EVERETT P. WHEELER, 
CHARLES B. WILBY, 


ANSLEY WILCOX, 

C. D. WILLARD, 

FREDERICK C. WINKLER, 

R. FRANCIS WOOD, 

CLINTON ROGERS WOODRUFF, 
MORRILL WYMAN, JR. 


Offices of the League , 

No. 79 Wall St., New York 














